Tuesday - November 14, 2006

Godless?

Today’s NY TIMES has a fairly reasonable analysis of the election and why what happened did happen in an editorial entitled ”The Real Message Of The Midterms” (requires subscription) by Andrew Kohut, a nonpartisan pollster and president of The Pew Research Center. According to Mr. Kohut, the election didn’t mark a real about-face in the voters but it did involve a few things that bear looking into.

I was particularly concerned with the third item in the list, which showed that voters with little or no religion in their lives voted for Democrats by a 2 to 1 margin. This bothered me immensely as I began to wonder if America was really becoming a nation of godless secularists.

As if to reinforce this worry, last night when I was channel-surfing I stumbled across a comedy special on HBO with Roseanne Barr live at some comedy club. I tuned in just in time to hear the bloated blimp dressed in a garish, eyeball-bursting muu-muu declare to the audience, “I hate religion. Don’t you? Religious people really suck.” --- and the audience applauded.

I had to turn off the TV at that point. I just sat there in the silence for a few minutes pondering the statements I had just heard. Statements that were disguised as “comedy”? I’m probably not the most deeply religious person in the world. I attend church fairly often but not every week and I don’t go around trying to convert the “heathens” among us. I feel it’s their choice and they can live (and die) with it. What I do believe in is that this nation is “one nation, under God”. After all, if we’re not beholden to The Creator for the good things we enjoy, then who should we thank ... Hollywood?

• Political Realignment: The Democratic win is not a sign of political realignment. Yes, the Democrats won the popular vote, and the exit polls showed that more Democrats than Republicans voted (by 2 percentage points). But the popular vote margin favoring the Democrats was relatively modest, even though it resulted in many Democratic victories. Democrats won by almost the same margin by which Republicans won in 2002. The turnout pattern was not that unusual either. A plurality of the electorate has been Democratic in three of the last five elections.


• The Moderate Voters: The outcome of this election – and others in our recent history — was determined by the shifting sentiments of independents and moderates. It is no exaggeration to say that the views of the least ideological voters decided this election for the Democrats. Political independents, who divided their votes evenly between George Bush and John Kerry in 2004, swung decisively in favor of the Democrats this year. And moderates voted more Democratic than in 2004 by a 10-percentage-point margin as shown in the table below.


• Religious Voters: There are few signs that the Republican base deserted the party. Christian conservatives, and conservatives generally, voted as Republican as they did in ’02. Nor did white evangelical Protestants defect to the Democrats in any substantial number, as a number of post-election news stories have suggested. The real religion story of this election is that the least religious Americans — voters who attend church rarely or never — made the biggest difference to the outcome of the election. This group gave Democrats an even greater share of their vote — 62 percent, up from 52 percent in 2002.


• Referendum On Bush: The current election was not about social values or other broad ideological issues. It was a referendum on Bush and G.O.P. control of Congress. As is so often the case in times of change, performance, not ideology, is what counts. The exit polls showed that Bush was much more of a drag on G.O.P. candidates than was former President Clinton on the Democratic candidates in 1994. More than a third of those polled (36 percent) said they voted to oppose Bush; that compares with 27 percent who voted to oppose Clinton in 1994, and 21 percent in 1998, the year Congress impeached the president.


• The War In Iraq: The Iraq conflict was the central issue of this election — by election time only 42 percent of the public approved of the war, compared with 56 percent who disapproved. Eighty percent of voters who disapproved of the war favored Democrats. And although war supporters backed the Republicans in their districts by virtually the same margin, there weren’t nearly as many of them. The war, together with a number of performance failures — notably the administration’s handling of the aftermath of hurricane Katrina — took Bush’s approval rating down from 52 percent in Jan 2005 to 42 percent on election day.


• Redistricting Effect: This election should moderate concerns that redistricting significantly reduced political competitiveness. Democrats won a number of seats in supposedly safe Republican districts and in districts where Bush sailed to victory in ’04. In fact, Republicans managed to win the popular vote by a comfortable margin only in districts where Bush won more than 60 percent of the vote in 2004. No doubt, gerrymandering affected the outcome of this and other recent elections, but it provides no bulwark against the sentiment of an aroused electorate.

Posted by The Skipper     on 11/14/2006 at 01:42 PM   
Filed Under: • Politics • Religion •  
• Comments (1) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

DISCLAIMER

THE SERVICES AND MATERIALS ON THIS WEBSITE ARE PROVIDED "AS IS" AND THE HOSTS OF THIS SITE EXPRESSLY DISCLAIMS ANY AND ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF SATISFACTORY QUALITY, MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, WITH RESPECT TO THE SERVICE OR ANY MATERIALS.

Not that very many people ever read this far down, but this blog was the creation of Allan Kelly and his friend Vilmar. Vilmar moved on to his own blog some time ago, and Allan ran this place alone until his sudden and unexpected death partway through 2006. We all miss him. A lot. Even though he is gone this site will always still be more than a little bit his. We who are left to carry on the BMEWS tradition owe him a great debt of gratitude, and we hope to be able to pay that back by following his last advice to us all:

1. Keep a firm grasp of Right and Wrong
2. Stay involved with government on every level and don't let those bastards get away with a thing
3. Use every legal means to defend yourself in the event of real internal trouble, and, most importantly:
4. Keep talking to each other, whether here or elsewhere

It's been a long strange trip without you Skipper, but thanks for pointing us in the right direction and giving us a swift kick in the behind to get us going. Keep lookin' down on us, will ya? Thanks.

THE INFORMATION AND OTHER CONTENTS OF THIS WEBSITE ARE DESIGNED TO COMPLY WITH THE LAWS OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. THIS WEBSITE SHALL BE GOVERNED BY AND CONSTRUED IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE LAWS OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA AND ALL PARTIES IRREVOCABLY SUBMIT TO THE JURISDICTION OF THE AMERICAN COURTS. IF ANYTHING ON THIS WEBSITE IS CONSTRUED AS BEING CONTRARY TO THE LAWS APPLICABLE IN ANY OTHER COUNTRY, THEN THIS WEBSITE IS NOT INTENDED TO BE ACCESSED BY PERSONS FROM THAT COUNTRY AND ANY PERSONS WHO ARE SUBJECT TO SUCH LAWS SHALL NOT BE ENTITLED TO USE OUR SERVICES UNLESS THEY CAN SATISFY US THAT SUCH USE WOULD BE LAWFUL.

Copyright © 2004-2008 Domain Owner